Be Ready to Love Your Corpse Son
by Ferith12
Summary: The story of the death of the HRE and the birth of Germany in an age of enlightenment. Or, in which Prussia is good at Science, bad at Feelings, and sort of kind of maybe commits a crime against God and Nature. At least he makes better life choices than Viktor Frankenstein, I guess?


Prussia was a man of order. He loved rules, systems. He thought of the world like clockwork, as divisible, discernable, controllable.

He had belonged to the dark ages once. A time when people all were dirty and ignorant and small.

(It hadn't felt like the dark ages then. The sun in Jerusalem was hot and blinding, his mind was thirsty for knowledge, and he filled it with books from what felt like all over the world.)

He had been God-fearing once. Earnestly fearful, and though not humble then, he would never have dreamed…

The study of the human body has always been a hobby of his, ever since those long, long ago days when he was nothing but a German hospital in the Holy Lands. A nation's body isn't much like a human's, but the foundation is helpful.

He had never cared much for the Holy Roman Empire. When the Teutonic Knights was young, he had seemed very far off and stodgy. They never had grown to know each other well before Prussia left it, the first great stone in the avalanche of its fall.

When Austria had dumped the child on his doorstep, Prussia had been annoyed more than anything.  
"He's dying," Austria said, "Be kind to him, if you're capable of it." His voice was haughty and his words dismissive, but beneath it there was something which might almost have been like pleading.

Prussia was not kind, not then and never before. But he was a hospital, once, founded to protect and heal.

Heinrich was put under his care, and he did not take this duty lightly.

He had been curious about a nation's anatomy before this, of course, just as he was about all things. It had not been an interest he pursued aggressively, because it was not an interest that was useful, but he had always been observant.

He had seen many nations die. Had killed all the Baltics save Lithuania, watched the knightly orders fall one by one.

For a nation to die is a terrible thing. To die slowly is torturous.

Heinrich had been a child still, would always be a child, though he was older than Prussia. Prussia had always taken this to mean he was born to failure.

Heinrich was a child, really and truly a child, and frightened and sick and in pain.

Prussia combed through his old diaries for his past observations, consulted any nation he could find willing to care, or else interested in the intellectual exercise enough not to be annoyed by his incessant questioning. He soon became the foremost expert on the biological processes of a nation.

Heinrich was a child who was suffering, and he was a child in Prussia's care. Prussia was obligated to take care of him, but he had not meant to care for him.

The death of the Holy Roman Empire was a historical and political fact. The nation was dead, and there could be no preserving the child past the point of its loss.

Prussia had not meant to care. He watched this child as he fought for every breath, as his strength deserted him. He was a great nation, a man of action, he was not soft. He held the child in his arms, and did all he knew how to lend him strength, to lessen his pain. All he knew was more, perhaps, than anyone else had ever known on the subject. All he knew was not enough.

People, humans and nations, died constantly. This was not some new reality. But those people, most of them, were not Prussia's older-little-not-brother. Prussia was not used to caring, but he also could not stop himself.

He prayed in the dark, quiet of the night, as Heinrich slept. No miracle came.

Prussia had been a God fearer once. He still was a believer, a believer in order and rationality, the world worked by systems and rules and could not but be ordained by a higher being, the existence of God was well proved. Prussia might even have called himself pious. Not to the degree he had once been, true, but still he was personally religious, even holding fast to catholicism regardless of politics and the stance of the nation he embodied.

But fear, this was the nineteenth century. Men were more knowledgeable now, there was nothing they could not achieve, nothing that necessitated fear to a rational mind. Fear was for pagans and children.

The Holy Roman Empire breathed his last. Prussia refused to accept.

He tore the child's body apart and reassembled it. Stitched it together guided by discoveries he learned in secret and never told. This was the nineteenth century. The divine was dead, in practicality if not in theory. The human machine was like clockwork, divisible, discernable, controllable. What was death but a malfunction? What was the soul but a function of the flesh?

He fought wars and gained power, tethered child's body to people and land.

He held what once was the Holy Roman Empire in his arms and watched its eyes flutter open.

And they were empty.

Prussia looked into the eyes of this thing which he had caused to be and horror gripped his very bones.

This was the nineteenth century, and men were fools with deadly wisdom. But souls were not theirs to control, be they human or nation, and no amount of knowledge can turn back death.

Prussia saw this child-thing he had cobbled together from corpse and history, and knew with a terrible, eternal knowing that he had trespassed too far. He would gain more power and influence than he had ever had, but this child would destroy him in the end.

"Who are you?" the child asked in an empty voice.

Prussia's heart was seized with terror and loathing that he had never felt before. But he was not one to hide from his mistakes, nor would he ever fail to face his responsibilities. So he pushed down the fear and horror and disgust and horrible sense of eventual doom, he held the child-who-was-not-Heinrich closer and smiled his sharpest smile and said, "I'm Prussia, your awesome big brother!"

And when the child smiled back, the smile was not empty.


End file.
